Old Man Trump Makes Karoline Leavitt Answer a Question for Him

Donald Trump is apparently not the point person on his own administration’s policy.

In the past 24 hours, the president has repeatedly deferred questions about the mechanics of his government to his foot soldiers, deflecting the responsibilities and duties that he campaigned three times (and at one point allegedly conspired) to acquire.

During an Oval Office press briefing Friday, Trump called on his press secretary Karoline Leavitt to answer a question about rising prices and affordability in his stead.

“We did a great job on groceries and affordability. The only problem is the fake news, you people don’t want to report it. And in fact, I’d like to ask Karoline—where’s Karoline? I’d like to ask Karoline a question,” Trump said.

But Leavitt was outside the room.

“She deserted me,” Trump wailed to laughter from the room, but eventually she returned.

“Karoline, could you discuss that question that was asked and how it was asked in such a fake, disgusting manner by the fake news?” Trump said.

“Yeah, I just saw.… Very unfortunate that the reporter refused to address, sir, what you just said,” Leavitt said, beginning a long scolding for the attending media outlets. “Which is that you inherited the worst inflation crisis in modern American history and you are fixing it in 10 short months, and your entire administration has been tasked with this effort.”

The relationship between Trump and Leavitt seems to be backward: Leavitt is supposed to elevate Trump’s original positions as his press secretary, not the other way around. But it’s not even the first instance this week in which Trump has opted out of functioning as the president.

During a White House meeting with Central Asian leaders Thursday night, a sleepy Trump tapped Vice President JD Vance to speak in his stead on the topic of Kazakhstan joining the Abraham Accords—though that may have actually saved face for the administration, since the president clearly doesn’t know how to pronounce Kazakhstan.

Cornell University has completely bent the knee to the Trump administration, making massive cultural and financial concessions in the process so it can get federal funding back.

On Friday, the university announced that it will pay the Trump administration $30 million over three years for reasons unspecified. It will also invest $30 million in “programs that incorporate AI and robotics, such as Digital Agriculture and Future Farming Technologies.”

Aside from those millions of dollars it’s shelling out, Cornell has agreed to hold “annual surveys to evaluate the campus climate for Cornell students, including the climate for students with shared Jewish ancestry,” to seek out “experts on laws and regulations regarding sanctions enforcement, anti-money laundering, and prevention of terrorist financing,” and hand over “anonymized” undergraduate admissions data directly to the federal government.

The agreement will also see Cornell abiding by Attorney General Pam Bondi’s “Guidance for Recipients of Federal Funding Regarding Unlawful Discrimination,” an anti-woke catchall memo designed to force universities to broadly pull back any kind of diversity, equity, and inclusion–adjacent policy and make culture-war-obsessed right wingers feel better about themselves.

Bondi’s memo declares that “using race, sex, or other protected characteristics for employment, program participation, resource allocation, or other similar activities, opportunities, or benefits, is unlawful.” It additionally bans race-based scholarships, trans people in collegiate sports, and cultural training of any kind.

“The months of stop-work orders, grant terminations, and funding freezes have stalled cutting-edge research, upended lives and careers, and threatened the future of academic programs at Cornell,” university President Michael Kotlikoff wrote in an email to the student body.

This extortion is a result of a monthslong, all-out crackdown on universities and any speech that the Trump administration deems left-wing. Dangling federal funding in the face of schools unless they cave to very narrow, very biased demands will only lead to suppression and resentment.

Donald Trump and his administration may be absent from COP30 climate talks in Belém, Brazil, but its attendees didn’t forget about him.

Several heads of state made speeches at the conference calling out the president by name, including many from South America. Colombian President Gustavo Petro, who compared Trump to Hitler at the U.N. earlier this year, said “Mr. Trump is against humankind,” while Chile’s president Gabriel Boric took aim at the president’s climate denialism.

“That is a lie,” Boric said about Trump calling climate change a “con job” and a “hoax made up by people with evil intentions.”

“We might have legitimate discussions about how to face these things, but we cannot deny them,” added Boric.

Some alluded to Trump without mentioning his name. Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva, Brazil’s president and a target of Trump’s ire, criticized “extremist forces that fabricate fake news on climate for political gain, while French President Emmanuel Macron urged his fellow leaders to “support free and independent science.”

“We must choose multilateralism over isolationism, science over ideology, and action over fatalism,” Macron added. Paris was the location of a landmark climate deal 10 years ago, agreed to by 200 nations including the U.S. under President Obama, only for Trump to withdraw during his first term as president.

Joe Biden’s election and re-entry into the agreement was short-lived with Trump’s reelection, and the MAGA Republican surprised nobody by immediately undoing many of his predecessor’s climate efforts. Now, the U.S. under Trump refuses to be a part of climate solutions, while the rest of the world is still trying to mitigate the crisis.

President Donald Trump’s administration claims that its military strikes on foreign vessels that are allegedly smuggling drugs have targeted “unlawful combatants” engaged in an “armed conflict.” But the Associated Press reported Friday that this isn’t entirely true.

Since the beginning of September, the Pentagon has announced 17 military strikes against vessels around Latin America, summarily executing more than 66 alleged drug smugglers. The Trump administration has essentially declared war against foreign cartels it claims are“nonstate armed groups,” asserting that their transport of drugs constituted “an armed attack against the United States.”

But a handful of dead men identified by the AP weren’t so-called “narco-terrorists” or members of criminal gangs or cartels. And they were smuggling cocaine, not synthetic opioids responsible for killing tens of thousands of Americans every year.

One man killed in the first strike was Luis “Che” Martínez, a 60-year-old local crime boss who had previously been jailed for human trafficking charges. Although the Trump administration claimed that the 11 men killed were members of Tren de Aragua, Martinez’s relatives told AP that they did not believe he was a member of that gang.

Another man killed in a U.S. military strike on a vessel was Robert Sánchez, a 41-year-old fisherman and skilled boat pilot from a Venezuelan peninsula plagued by poverty. Despite the Trump administration’s claim that it was preventing the imminent transit of deadly drugs to the United States, the coastal area in Venezuela where Sánchez lived was a popular transit hub for cocaine headed for Europe. Cocaine, and other drugs bound for the United States, are typically moved through the Pacific Ocean.

Another man killed was Juan Carlos “El Guaramero” Fuentes, who’d turned to smuggling after the public bus he operated broke down and the government failed to fix it. Another was Dushak Milovcic, a 24-year-old drop-out of Venezuela’s National Guard Academy. Neither of them were gang members, either.

The AP’s latest findings are in line with previous disturbing admissions from the Pentagon, which told lawmakers that “they do not need to positively identify individuals on the vessel to do the strikes,” and “could not satisfy the evidentiary burden” required to detain or prosecute crew members. The Pentagon also admitted that the only drug targeted in the strike was cocaine, “a facilitating drug of fentanyl.”

The Trump administration has claimed the strikes are an effort to curb drug smuggling. The government is also making plans to possibly expand its campaign to dry land—and its list of potential targets reportedly includes Venezuelan military sites.

Vice President JD Vance is blatantly attacking the Constitution’s separation of powers after a federal judge ordered the Trump administration to fully fund the Supplemental Assistance Nutrition Program.

Speaking in the White House Thursday, Vance called the ruling “absurd,” because “you have a federal judge effectively telling us what we have to do in the midst of the Democrat government shutdown.”

“What we’d like to do is to have the Democrats open up the government, of course, then we can fund SNAP, and we can also do a lot of other good things for the American people,” Vance said. “But in the midst of a shutdown, we can’t have a federal court telling the president how he has to triage the situation.”

It’s yet another attack on an independent judiciary from the White House, and came hours before the administration appealed the judge’s ruling Friday, with Justice Department lawyers asking for a pause.

U.S. District Judge John McConnell’s decision “has thrust the Judiciary into the ongoing shutdown negotiations and may well have the effect of extending the lapse in appropriations, exacerbating the problem that the court was misguidedly trying to mitigate,” DOJ lawyers argued. “This unprecedented injunction makes a mockery of the separation of powers. Courts hold neither the power to appropriate nor the power to spend.”

“There is no lawful basis for an order that directs USDA to somehow find $4 billion in the metaphorical couch cushions,” the lawyers wrote. Meanwhile, as the Trump administration refuses to fund a food program for the destitute, they continue to bail out foreign countries and make record military purchases, even as the government shutdown costs the U.S. billions of dollars. But apparently, it’s all the fault of Democrats and meddlesome judges.

Representative Elise Stefanik announced her New York gubernatorial campaign early Friday, though she may not have let her team know.

The Trump loyalist’s website was still plastered in “lorem ipsum” placeholder text by the time she shared the link to her X account. But eagle-eyed critics noticed that wasn’t the only mistake on the half-baked project.

The website was also riddled with basic grammatical errors, espousing classic American values such as “family first trust,”  “will alternative,” and “legacy planningegal issues.”

In announcing her bid for the 2026 race, Stefanik slammed New York’s current leader, Kathy Hochul, as the “worst governor in America.”

“Under her failed leadership, New York is the most unaffordable state in the nation with the highest taxes, highest energy, utilities, rent, and grocery bills,” Stefanik alleged. 

“When New Yorkers were looking for leadership from our Governor, she bent the knee to the raging Defund the Police, Tax Hiking Communist causing catastrophe for New York families,” she continued, referring to New York City’s Mayor-elect Zohran Mamdani, who received more than 50 percent of the citywide vote Tuesday, despite the White House’s best efforts to derail his campaign.

Yet Stefanik’s apparent detestation of the democratic socialist didn’t stop her from taking a page out of Mamdani’s playbook. The top-ranking New York Republican very clearly peeled lessons from the 34-year-old’s wildly popular platform, fixating her messaging on affordability—one of Mamdani’s major policy points.

“I am running for Governor to make New York affordable and safe FOR ALL,” Stefanik wrote. “FIRE HOCHUL. SAVE NEW YORK.”

Hochul took the reins of New York in 2021 after ex-Governor Andrew Cuomo was forced out of Albany by two egregious scandals of his own making: allegations of sexual harassment from more than a dozen of his own staffers, and an enormous cover-up of Covid-19-related nursing home deaths.

A year later, New Yorkers seemed to warm up to their unanticipated leader. Hochul won the 2022 election by more than 370,000 votes, or 7 percent of the electorate, against Republican gubernatorial candidate Lee Zeldin, who now serves as Donald Trump’s administrator for the Environmental Protection Agency.  

Hochul has not yet announced whether she plans to run for another term, but Stefanik would need an explosive campaign to win over Republican and Democratic voters to thwart the incumbent.

Stefanik has drawn national attention in recent years, expediently ascending the rungs of the Republican Party since she went all in on the MAGA movement. She wasn’t always in the president’s pocket, however. When Trump first ran for president, Stefanik expressed that she believed his language and behavior toward women was “offensive” and “just wrong.” 

Comedian Ziwe Fumudoh’s sit-down with disgraced New York City Mayor Eric Adams may have been the most ridiculous exit interview in modern history.

The 20-minute conversation felt like one strange, long joke that only Ziwe was in on. The mayor flirted with his interviewer (more than 30 years his junior) several times, talked about hooking up with the Statue of Liberty, claimed that he had proof Gracie Mansion is haunted, ranted about saggy pants, and skirted around addressing his various federal indictments and scandals—which he could have gone to prison for if Trump’s DOJ didn’t drop his cases.

Here are some of the other weirdest moments from the interview:

1. “Not the bulge that others would talk about”

“When you on the train with that beautiful outfit you have on, and all of a sudden you see someone hanging out there and they have a bulge on they side—and not the bulge that others would talk about—then you wanna make sure they stop and they frisk,” Adams said, shooting his shot at Ziwe while simultaneously plugging NYPD stop and frisk policies that have long been racist and unconstitutional.

“That felt like a threat,” Ziwe said, referring to the mayor’s innuendo.

“Well you may think he has a weapon,” Adams replied.

“What are you saying right now?”

“What are you feeling right now?”

2. “The firmness of my body.”

Ziwe asked Adams about his proclivity for night life, as he’s been known to frequent clubs, bars, and hookah and cigar lounges during his tenure.

“Why do people think [at] 65 you should not be out? You know, when I get out of the shower and take a look at myself and my six-pack, and the firmness of my body, I’m living the 65 life,” Adams said.

3. Nepotism for his “ex-shorty.”

The mayor was also questioned about his appointment of ex-girlfriend Jasmine Ray. Adams dated Ray from around 2014 until he broke up with her in 2021, as she details in her recent book. But in 2022, Adams created a position for her—a $161,000 gig to be the director of his “Office of Sports.”

“I must ask, did you appoint Jasmine Ray as the city’s first director of sports, wellness, and recreation because she was your ex-shorty?” Ziwe asked.

“Because she was good at her job, and she did it well,” Adams replied. “And so, if you met someone 10 years ago and you hung out with, and you decide 10 years later you wanted to bring them on because you know how good they are at their job? You should do so.… I’m pretty sure all of your boos you didn’t abandon them merely because you had a relationship with them once.”

Adams concluded his interview with a message to democratic socialist Mayor-elect Zohran Mamdani.

“This is New York. It’s not Cuba. It’s not China. It is the center of capitalism, not socialism. Can’t take it backwards. We made too much success. Gotta move forward.”

Watch the entire interview here.

Immigration and Customs Enforcement is hoping to lure New York City police officers to join its ranks by suggesting their current employer doesn’t really respect them.

An advertisement ICE posted to social media Thursday attempted to lure law enforcement officers away from the city they’ve supposedly sworn to protect.

“NYPD OFFICERS: Join an agency that respects you, your family, and your commitment to serving in law enforcement,” the post read. It included a link to a recruitment page, claiming that the country had been “invaded by criminals and predators.”

The Trump administration’s effort to poach from the NYPD’s head count comes as the law enforcement agency has only recently stopped struggling with hiring and retention, after significantly reducing education and age requirements.

Meanwhile, ICE has struggled with its own recruitment “shit show,” as the agency flounders to achieve White House deputy chief of staff Stephen Miller’s quest to hire 10,000 so-called “Homeland Defenders” by January. Increased recruitment efforts have reportedly placed an immense strain on ICE officials, who have had to turn away more than 200 new recruits who were improperly vetted.

This latest ad comes in the wake of Zohran Mamdani’s stunning victory in New York City’s mayoral election, meaning that the democratic socialist is set to inherit the NYPD’s multibillion-dollar surveillance state apparatus. Mamdani has presented a new vision for public safety by planning to establish the Department of Community Safety, which will handle nonemergency 911 calls in the place of armed police officers, putting mental health, homelessness, and prevention outreach in the hands of an entirely separate agency.

In the wake of Mamdani’s victory, Donald Trump seems adamant that New York City should fall to ruin, and on Thursday he threatened to gut the city’s federal funded infrastructure projects, including “bridges, and tunnels, and all of the things that were being planned for New York.”

But ICE operations would still continue there, he said. “They have killers in New York, we want to get them out,” Trump said. But his administration’s latest efforts to strip the ranks of the NYPD reveals the government is far more interested in deporting immigrants than addressing crime.

South Carolina Representative Nancy Mace’s explicit rant about the abuses of her ex-fiancé have come back to bite her.

Patrick Bryant filed a defamation suit against the Lowcountry lawmaker Friday, noting in a social media statement that he would no longer “stay quiet” regarding Mace’s “completely false accusations.”

Mace, however, did not take the news well.

“What kind of guy sues his own rape victim and sues women he filmed without their knowledge, permission or consent for YEARS? Who does that?” Mace posted Friday morning. “Can’t wait for a court hearing on this!!! Put me in coach—I’m ready to testify, under oath—this guy should be rotting in a jail cell—not suing his victims!!!

“HOLD THE LINE,” she added.

Mace put Bryant on full blast during a House Oversight Committee hearing in May, when she alleged that he was a “predator” who had taken videos of her during the course of their relationship without her consent. (In a shocking turn of events, Mace showcased what she described as her “naked silhouette” during the hearing.)

The South Carolinian also mentioned that in 2023, she discovered a trove of hidden camera nude images of women that she argued were taken by Bryant, similarly without those women’s consent. She then posted images of the other women during the hearing, though she said she had gotten permission to do so.

It was all in an effort to advance two pieces of legislation that she had introduced months prior, centered on further prohibiting “video voyeurism” and expanding a “civil right of action for victims.”

But people close to Mace weren’t so sure that her vulnerability was completely altruistic. In an April deposition tied to a Charleston County civil case, Mace’s former political adviser Wesley Donehue claimed that the salacious, dredged-up material was all part of a bogus extortion attempt by Mace to “gain 100 percent ownership” of homes the former couple had in Washington and South Carolina’s Isle of Palms.

President Trump seems to love corrupt politicians.

On Thursday evening, the president pardoned Glen Casada, the former Tennessee state House speaker, as well as one of his aides, of corruption charges, claiming that the Biden administration “over-prosecuted” the two of them.

Casada and his former chief of staff Cade Cothren were sentenced in September for running a scheme to get lawmakers to use their taxpayer-funded mail business. Prosecutors said that Cothren launched Phoenix Solutions with the support of his boss and another Tennessee state representative, Robin Smith, to set up a mailer program for legislators.

The company had a fictional “Matthew Phoenix” listed as its head, and Casada and Smith received $52,000 in taxpayer money from the company’s activities. The company wasn’t Casada’s only misdeed, either: He resigned in 2019 due to many scandals, including sending sexually explicit text messages about women to Cothren, sending racist text messages, and using cocaine inside a legislative office building.

It’s yet another controversial presidential pardon on Trump’s already long list. In this case, it’s a fellow Republican. Since being sworn in, Trump has pardoned the January 6 rioters who sought to overturn the 2020 election on his behalf, a crypto billionaire who cut a deal with the Trumps, a corrupt electric car magnate, and numerous others.

Trump even commuted the sentence given to notorious liar and former Representative George Santos, convicted on multiple counts of fraud and corruption. It seems that to the president, crimes don’t matter if you’re an ally or are useful to him. It’s not surprising, considering Trump’s own numerous corrupt activities.